Chrono Trigger Space Crunching and etc.

[ZeaLitY]

Been meaning to put this on the table since I talked to Geiger about it in 2006.

It looks like the original scope of the game was going to be much grander than what we got.
Some of the stuff here and there is much more complex.
But it looks like they ran into space limitations
"Isn't 32 Megs great"  probably should have been "We only had 32 Megs.  Imagine what we could have done with more."

Yes, but it would have been like a $200 game.
And probably would have been bug-tastic.  The SNES really was not designed to go above 32 MBits.
The location maps alone show the sort of problems they went through though.
The maps are in a different format, have the tile properties aligned differently, and only use the standard packet compression.
The release version uses run-length encoding on the tile properties and then compresses the whole thing again with packet compression.
The re-arrangement was also done to save space.
Serious space crunch.

[Kebrel]

So it is now correct to say "Chrono Trigger was too awesome to be"

[JLukas]

To better illustrate the maps issue, the pre-release has about a quarter less maps of the final release, yet still takes up the same amount of space, if not more.

Similar nickel-and-diming for free bytes is present in the location events as well.  Three debug bytes removed per event, and some frequently used 2 byte event commands were given 1 byte variants.

At the time (Q4 1994), 32 megabits was just becoming a reality in games like Donkey Kong Country.  It would've been simply too expensive at the time for a 48 megabit cart.  ToP wasn't until a year later.

Even if there was more space, time was still an issue.  How much additional content was ready and could've been added (and beta tested) before the 3/11 release?  From what I can gather, there was simply no way they were going to budge from that date (which had been heavily advertised for months and months) and they were just barely able to meet that deadline.

I think if they squeezed every last drop out of the remaining free space in the 32 megabit and their deadline, the final game could've had the 3 lost beta dungeons: Singing Mountain, Zeal dungeon, and Forest Ruins.  In TF, for example, 4 Forest Maze maps (the largest compressed map) can be imported without expansion.

Again, given the time to optimize, the full, uncut Ted Woolsey translation could've fit as well.

Anyway, whenever I see this topic it makes me wonder what the game, like Secret of Mana, might have been like if the SNES CD was released.

[BROJ]

I think if they squeezed every last drop out of the remaining free space in the 32 megabit and their deadline, the final game could've had the 3 lost beta dungeons: Singing Mountain, Zeal dungeon, and Forest Ruins.  In TF, for example, 4 Forest Maze maps (the largest compressed map) can be imported without expansion.

Has any project implemented all of the "lost" dungeons? (forgive me, I haven't played completely through all of the fan creations.)

Anyway, whenever I see this topic it makes me wonder what the game, like Secret of Mana, might have been like if the SNES CD was released.

It may have put even LoM to shame, content-wise. Sadly, such things are usually to good to be true when the almighty greenback is involved.